


Heavy Words Do Not Bear Repeating (I Do Not Dare Repeat Them)

by shewho



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Childhood Trauma, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inappropriate Use of Prescription Medicines, M/M, Nick Stokes centric, Panic Attacks, Stream of Consciousness, The Healing Properties of Snuggles, overuse of commas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-19 01:42:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20649131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewho/pseuds/shewho
Summary: Realizations are often ugly. Confessions almost always are.---Greg learns something ugly about his boyfriend's past. It goes about as well as you'd expect.





	Heavy Words Do Not Bear Repeating (I Do Not Dare Repeat Them)

Nick huffs out a breath, loud in the weird echoey stillness of the bathroom. “If I tell you,” he starts harshly, “You can’t ever say anything about it, to anyone, ever. I’m serious. Never, G.”

“I won’t.”

“You promise?”

Greg draws an X over his heart with one finger, the sincerity in his eyes hard to look at. “Promise _and_ swear.” The serious expression on his face looks unbecoming, out of place. Greg has the kind of face that should always be smiling. He’s ill-suited for solemnity.

“It was a long time ago,” Nick says quietly, barely words at all. “Years ago.” He draws in a breath that’s shakier than it should be. “So I don’t want… it’s not a big deal, okay? It’s just… it’s a thing that happened, and it sucked, but it wasn’t a big deal.”

Shifting awkwardly, Greg straightens up, like he’s bracing himself. His bony kneecap digs into Nick’s shin as he moves, their bare feet pressed together in the bottom of the tub as they sit facing each other. “Got it,” he says. “Small deal. Miniscule.”

“You’d think,” Nick says slowly, “With six other kids, my parents could’ve found somebody to babysit me that night. But Jules and Will and Elbie were already away at school, and Jake was going camping with a bunch of his old Boy Scout buddies, and Cam had been in Austin since Thursday for some softball tourney, and EJ got invited sleeping over at her friend’s house, and our regular sitter, Mina Harris, was visiting some college in Virginia, so I remember my mom was running around all that afternoon when I came home from school, trying to find someone to come watch me while she and Dad went to some swanky fundraising dinner. Honestly, I still dunno where she dug this girl up but I hope to god it wasn’t a recommendation from one of her friends or something.”

He feels himself talking faster and then still faster, the words spilling out in an uncontrolled scramble, but he can’t help it. If he doesn’t get this out _now_ he’s gonna find a way to take it back later, to never tell Greg the truth, and he _promised_.

“She was… I thought she was cool, at first. She had these long nails painted electric highlighter yellow; I remember thinking that EJ would’ve thought they were _so_ cool, would’ve wanted this girl to help her paint _her_ nails if she’d been home that night. And I remember – she let me watch TV for _hours_, way later than my mom ever allowed. So when she finally told me that it was my bedtime, I was happy to do whatever she said ‘cause she’d broken my mom’s no-candy rule and her no-television-after-eight rule. And I guess I didn’t really think it was weird when she said she’d come and tuck me in.”

Blood thunders in Nick’s ears as the music floating in from Greg’s bedroom fades to a tinny whine and Greg’s sweet, open face creases with concern as he brushes the backs of his knuckles against Nick’s cheek, light as anything.

“Nicky,” Greg says, his voice sounding suddenly very far away, “You don’t have to tell me this.”

“I want to,” he hears himself say, the words cracking into awkward pieces. “You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted to tell this to.”

“Okay,” Greg whispers. “Okay. Go ahead.”

“I don’t… most of it’s gone all fuzzy, which is good, I guess. But I remember that her hands were all hot, and clammy. And that she smelled like that horrible musky one-note perfume from the drugstore, you know? The kind that makes your head ache if you sniff it too long? And that her mouth,” (He sees Greg blanch at this, like he might be sick, and feels a vague, detached spike of satisfaction because _yes, you should be horrified, what she did to me was horrifying_) “Tasted like the peanut butter and banana sandwiches she’d made for dinner.”

He spares Greg the goriest details – how her nails left long pink gouges in his skin; the friction burn down his spine caused by the carpet and how it oozed, raw and painful for days afterward, ruining three of his t-shirts which were unceremoniously thrown into curbside dumpsters on his way to school; her voice in his ear_, “That’s it, that’s it,”_ and the waxy menthol scent of her Carmex; the way she’d swallowed down his fingers after they’d been inside her and smiled at him like a cartoon cat about to pounce – not really for Greg’s sake but because he _can’t_, this is already _so much_ and if he says those words out loud it is going to break him, he just knows it.

“I remember sneaking into Jules and Cam’s bathroom afterwards because back then it was the only one in the house with a working lock. Jules had gotten tired of Cam constantly breaking into her makeup, so she’d biked to the hardware store one day during her freshman year, borrowed one of our dad’s drills, and put a lock on the door herself. When she left for college, she always kept the key on top of the door frame so Cam could lock EJ and us boys out if she wanted to, and so I remember dragging this fluffy, lacy stool from in front of one of the girls’ vanity tables over to the bathroom so I could reach the key.”

Nick stares at the tiled wall just behind Greg’s left ear, studying the cracks in the grout. Swallows, tries to make his voice come out less wrecked and broken.

“Cam had this funky little loofah hanging from the showerhead. I remember it sorta reminded me of a jellyfish. And I remember sitting on the floor of the shower stall, in that bathroom that always smelled so girly, and thinking, _that girl didn’t smell right. My sisters smell like sunscreen and powder deodorant and cherry chewing gum and that fancy lilac lotion from France that Grandma gives them for Christmas every year_._ Something’s wrong with that girl; she didn’t smell right._” He snorts wetly, “Ran the water so hot that I looked like a lobster when I finally got out. Probably lucky I didn’t scald myself for real.”

Greg makes a strangled sound at that, like he’s in pain.

“I dunno, I just remember later that night, sittin’ up in bed with one of my pillows crushed to my chest, holding my breath, staring at the sliver of light under my bedroom door and waiting for my mom to come home. Funny thing is, I don’t actually remember her coming home. I mean, she must’ve – she _did_ – but I guess I fell asleep before they made it back from the party, ‘cause the next thing I remember is her hollering my name up the stairs, tellin’ me to come on down for breakfast. Asking if I wanted peanut butter on my waffles or syrup.” Nick chuckles humorlessly, “As if I could ever eat peanut butter again.”

“That’s why you lied. That’s why you said were allergic, so you wouldn’t have to tell me why you hate peanut butter.”

Greg sounds upset. His voice shakes, and from this close, Nick can see his throat working, eyes squeezed shut, unshed tears caught in his dark lashes.

Nick wonders how many people have ever seen Greg like this, because it’s the antithesis of every sunny, goofy, carefree thing that Greg is at his core, and makes exactly zero sense.

“It’s okay, Greggo,” he tries to say lightly, but his voice breaks over the nickname and the words lose a lot of their assuasive value. “I never liked peanut butter all that much to begin with.”

“It _isn’t_,” Greg argues, sounding aggrieved.

“Hey, c’mon,” Nick says, desperation creeping into his tone. “It’s alright. ‘M sorry. I didn’t mean for this to go so – I didn’t mean to make you _cry_. It’s fine, I promise.”

“You shouldn’t be _sorry_,” Greg snaps, words bladed at the edges even as he pulls up the collar of his t-shirt to wipe his eyes. “You should be _pissed_. Fuck’s sake, Nick; _I’m _pissed, and upset, and I don’t think I’ve ever been this angry before in my entire _life_, but not because of you. Not ‘cause of anything _you _did.”

Greg’s breathing hitches audibly, and then he adds, in a voice so soft and subdued that it’s barely recognizable, “You didn’t do anything wrong, Nicky. You never did.”

There’s a faint rushing sound in his ears. Nick’s suddenly hyper-aware of his knees (which feel watery, despite the fact that he’s still seated) and his head (which feels like it’s about to float off his shoulders).

This – telling someone What Happened – is one of those surreal events that he’s sort of vaguely imagined over the years but never really considered the ramifications of. Like the way he figures most people daydream about the eulogies that’ll be delivered at their funeral, or winning the lottery.

Except nowhere in his imaginings did anybody ever say those words to him.

It hits him like a wave, like a sack of bricks dropped from a tenth-story window: the flood of memory, of _guilt - guilt - guilt - Mama, where were you; where WERE you - the shame - anger - shame - hypervigilance - don’t go, Cam, c’mon - his stomach in knots and his chest too small to breathe right - please, Jake, just lemme come with y’all, I promise I’ll be good - I’ll be good - I’ll be so good – it wasn’t so bad - it could’ve been worse - it was bad enough - it’s not a big deal - it’s a huge deal - it changed my life - it didn’t change who I am - it’s what makes a person - it happened - it happened and it wasn’t my fault._

The – it’s not a realization, except that it _is_ – leaves him breathless and gasping, and Greg’s features are wracked with concern when Nick opens his eyes, not realizing they’d fallen shut.

“Nick,” he says, and he looks scared.

He never meant to tell anybody, never meant to put that look on Greg’s face.

He’s shaking, a visible, violent trembling that rattles his teeth and vibrates in his extremities.

He can’t feel his fingers. Can’t feel his lips. The only thing he can hear over the ragged sound of his breathing is the thundering of blood in his brain, in his heart, which feels like it’s on the verge of stopping. It’s beating so, _so _fast. That can’t be sustainable.

“Nick,” Greg says again, is saying again. This is the fourth, or possibly the fifth time he has said Nick’s name in the past thirty seconds. “Listen, you gotta breathe. Just take a little one. Nice and deep.”

Nick stares at him, head spinning as he breathes rapid-fire short jittering gasps that ache and pull all the way down into his lungs.

“Baby, _please_.”

Greg’s crying. He can’t believe he did that. He can’t believe he made Greg cry.

There are fingers on his chin, Greg tilting his head up, forcing Nick to meet his eyes, brown into brown. “Breathe for me,” Greg says-asks-pleads-demands. “Take a breath.”

Nick shakes his head, a full-body shudder wracking his frame. He can’t, he _can’t_.

“Hang on,” Greg’s saying, his voice sounding a million miles away, like Nick’s somehow underwater, and then a fresh wave of panic broadsides him when Greg scrambles to his feet and _leaves_.

_Everybody leaves._

It feels like an hour passes before Greg reappears in the doorway. It feels like a year.

“C’mon,” he says, dropping straight down onto his knees with a sharp _crunch_ of cartilage that Nick registers dully must’ve hurt. Greg grabs hold of his hand, pops a pale blue tablet into his palm from the tiniest blister-pack Nick’s ever seen. “Take that,” he says, eyes huge, a white ring visible all the way around his irises. “Please, Nicky, you’re scarin’ the shit outta me.”

There’s a desperate tone to his voice that Nick’s never heard before and it punches through the terror, puts him on edge. His hand shakes like he’s dying, and it takes a few tries to find his mouth, to make his throat work enough to swallow.

(Some well-intentioned part of his hindbrain starts shrieking that he had no idea what he’s just ingested, what sort of drug Greg just pulled from god-knows where, and he crushes that thought underfoot like grinding out a cigarette.)

“Hang on,” Greg mutters again, clambering back into the tub, this time manhandling Nick until he’s got the older boy pressed to his chest, his chin hooked over Nick’s shoulder, Nick’s face pressed against his sternum. “Just take it easy. I think you’re havin’ a panic attack, baby.” Greg’s hand moves slowly, deliberately, tracing down the back of Nick’s neck to stroke the fine, soft hair along his nape, fingertips scritching against the hollow at the base of his skull.

Under the t-shirt, beneath layers of muscle and bone, he can hear Greg’s heartbeat thumping away. “Sorry,” he chokes. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” machine-gun fast until it isn’t a word anymore, just a series of sounds falling from his lips.

(The word feels like acid in his mouth.)

“Breathe,” Greg says, hand looping steady circles over Nick’s spine even though his voice shakes. “S’okay. Just breathe.”

He has no idea how long they sit there for, no concept of time passing except for the spreading numbness in his legs and thighs where they press against the acrylic floor of the bathtub. Slowly, slowly his breathing evens out. His fingers burn cold as the feeling returns to them.

“What _was _that?” Nick finally mumbles, feeling like he’s been beaten up from the inside out.

“Klonopin,” Greg replies, the words muffled slightly as he presses a kiss to the crown of Nick’s head. “I told you, my mom’s a pharma rep. She’s got, like, boxes and boxes of samples lying around. A more industrious child could make bank off it, but alas.” He shrugs, careful not to jostle Nick, who realizes then that he’s laid out on top of Greg in a boneless sprawl.

“A kid with lower morals than you, maybe,” he mumbles into the scoop of Greg’s t-shirt collar. “You’re her golden boy; you would never.”

“I wouldn’t,” Greg agrees good-naturedly.

A warm silence pools between them for a moment, then – “Greg?”

“Yeah?”

“You mind if we get outta this tub? I think my whole lower body is asleep.”

Greg stifles a laugh in Nick’s hair, letting it skitter across Nick’s scalp. “Sure. Whatever you want.”

What he wants, he can’t have.

What he _wants _is to go back to how things were, if not Before, then at least to how it all was two days ago.

He wants to be back in Greg’s bed two days ago. Wants to go back to mocking his boyfriend’s Scandinavian blush, the one Nick not-very-secretly loves, the one that stretches from Greg’s cheekbones all the way down to his stomach, visible proof of his feelings.

He wants to be sprawled out in Greg’s sheets – the ones with his initials stitched on them in swirls of white, _GHS_ – the mountain of blankets kicked off onto the carpet, with Greg sat back on his haunches between Nick’s legs, fingers drawing nonsense patterns along the pale skin of Nick’s inner thighs.

Wants Greg’s fingers hooked under his jaw, thumbs tracing the contours of his mouth; wants Greg to press his habitual kisses into Nick’s dimples. Wants those kisses to break into soft smiles against his skin because Greg’s enamored with all of Nick’s dimples, the ones in his cheeks and the matched pair perched right above where the his spine meets his ass.

He wants to watch Greg’s pupils blow out, eyes dark and wild, see his carefully-styled hair in disarray where Nick’s run his hands through it, twisted his fingers in and _pulled_.

He wants to go back to two days ago, how afterwards they’d cut up every mango on the kitchen counter and mixed the sticky-sweet overripe fruit with cayenne and cinnamon, carried the concoction back to Greg’s room in one of his mother’s hideous pink Tupperware containers. How they’d sprawled out opposite each other on the bed: Greg with his feet up, heels resting on the wall above his headboard, and Nick wedged into the corner where the headboard meets the wall.

He wants to go back to reading his sister’s battered Joan Didion paperback while Greg – never satisfied to let his hands sit idle – played with the protruding bones of Nick’s bare ankle, and once in a while said things like, _”I seriously can’t believe you’re seventeen and you’d never read J.D. until I came along” _and _”Read me the one about the Santa Ana again.”_

He doesn’t want to be in a pathetic puddle at the bottom of his boyfriend’s bathtub, face crusted tight with salt and snot and fuck knows what else. He doesn’t want this to be his life.

“Could use a nap,” he says instead, levering himself out of Greg’s lap. His voice creaks and cracks in odd places, making him sound like he’s about seventy not seventeen. “Think you can swing that?”

“Sounds doable, babe.”

Fingers clamped around Nick’s wrist, Greg pulls him up, leads him the few short feet down the hall. Nick’s legs burn fuzzy, all pins and needles pain , and he stumbles over a pair of discarded jeans just inside the doorway, his feet tangling in the disembodied legs. 

Greg steadies him reflexively with one hand, punching off the stereo with the other. The sudden silence unfamiliar and oppressive.

“Don’t.” Nick doesn’t realize that he’s said it until Greg turns to him, eyebrow quirked in a dozen unspoken questions. “Leave it. Just… maybe turn it down.”

“Alright,” Greg says simply, clicking a few buttons on his CD player. Nick hears the disks rotating inside, six slots vying for playing time. The music that finally comes on is instantly recognizable, a custom track Greg’s cobbled together of his favorite songs’ choruses looped together over and over.

_“It’s all the best bits,”_ he’d said when Nick asked. _”It’s the part that’s supposed to stick with you, after.”_

It’s strange to hear the opening notes emanating from the speakers so softly. Usually, Greg’s music – and by extension Nick’s music, as played by Greg – is cranked high, the sort of sound that makes your ears buzz afterward.

Neither of them says a word as they go through the same silent ritual they’ve grown accustomed to, stripping down to t-shirts and underwear, listening to the same stanzas loop over and over until the words blur together, inseparable and incomprehensible.

Greg twists the blinds shut, then pulls him down into the nest of blankets and quilts, a familiar violent jumble of texture and color: orange corduroy, lime green chenille, a patch of chlorinated aqua microfleece so blue that it hurts Nick’s eyes. Nick curls up so that his knees nearly reach his chest, reaching behind himself to grab Greg’s arm and tuck it tight around his waist, tugging until Greg’s draped halfway over him like the world’s boniest blanket. Greg obliges, fitting their bodies together within the cocoon: knees into knees, back into chest, hands entwined, everywhere their skin makes contact impossibly warm.

He isn’t exactly asleep, but he isn’t really awake either when Greg shifts beside him, squirmy in a way that has nothing to do with his usual level of baseline restlessness. Nick can hear him chewing at his lower lip, even if he can’t see it from the angle he’s at.

“What you said before,” Greg hesitates. “About me being the only person you’ve ever told. Was that true?”

They haven’t really had time to sleep properly, have just been floating in the soupy half-sleep for maybe an hour now, and it takes a moment for the words to register. When they do, Nick rolls over to face Greg with a soft shuffle of sheets. They’re just inches apart, so close that Nick could catalogue every freckle and pore if he wanted to, if he hadn’t already done that ages ago. 

This close, even in the darkened interior of Greg’s bedroom – with its solar system model suspended from the ceiling on fishing line and overlapped glossy posters lining the walls and the behemoth Frankenstein-ed stereo system glowing softly from on top of the dresser – he can tell that Greg’s eyelashes are still sticky-wet.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice sleep-slurred and slack in the artificial pre-twilight darkness. “Of course. ‘S all true. Nobody else knows, ‘cept for you and me, and her.”

Greg’s brows knit at that and his eyes squeeze shut; part confusion, part ache. It’s a burden; Nick knows this, has known it for _years_, can’t believe he just locked the chain of his own personal anchor around Greg’s ankle.

“Hey,” Nick says, his voice croaky with old tears and half-sleep. Greg’s whole body is all limb and bone, sharp everywhere except for the soft skin just below his eyes. When Nick reaches up a hand to touch it, his fingertips come away tacky and damp. He leans forward on his elbow, cupping the side of Greg’s face in one hand. “I really am sorry.”

“No,” Greg shakes his head slightly, his hand coming up to cover Nick’s where it rests against his cheek. “Don’t be. It’s good that you told me,” he reassures Nick. “‘Cause, like… everybody’s got baggage. Everybody’s got stuff they’d rather shut up in a box and bury somewhere secret, heavy stuff that’d sink you down into the lake bed if you let it.” The damp ridge of Greg’s cheekbone presses hard into Nick’s palm as he speaks, eyelashes fluttering against his fingers, light as anything. “I’m sorry that I made you tell me your stuff.”

“Bygones, man. It’s really not—”

“_Don’t _say it’s not a big deal,” Greg stiffens, his entire body tensing beside Nick’s. “Please don’t.”

“Alright, alright.” He’s really not up for an argument right now, even a small spat about semantics. “If it means that much to you.”

Greg mutters something that sounds suspiciously like _”you mean that much to me”,_ but he doesn’t push, just waits a few more quiet moments, letting Nick put his cold feet between Greg’s calves. “How’re you feeling? Any better?” 

Nick thinks about how in one more year, Before What Happened and After What Happened will be the same amount of time; how in two years, After will the majority of his life, for the rest of his life. How this benchmark is never, ever going to go away, no matter how many little boxes he tries to shove it into.

It’s a sobering thought, but – strangely – doesn’t leave him feeling upset. Resigned, maybe. He isn’t sure. Mostly, he’s just exhausted, heavy and drained like someone’s lined his chest cavity with cement and replaced his organs with rocks.

“Yeah,” Nick mumbles, fidgeting with a seam on the pillowcase between their heads, “Little bit better.” His brain still feels like it’s been put through a blender and then poured back in through his ear, but Nick doesn’t feel like he’s actively dying anymore, so that’s a huge plus. “Tired, mostly.” And then, because he just doesn’t have the energy to keep the thought behind his teeth where it belongs: “‘M glad you’re here.”

Greg chuckles at that, and the sound hits Nick with a double-tap of surprise and then shame at his surprise when it registers that Greg’s laughter isn’t derisive; it’s so genuine and soft and _sweet_ that it hurts. “It’s my house, baby,” Greg says, and Nick can hear him smiling. “Of course I’m here.”

“Shut up,” Nick snorts, burrowing into the notch between Greg’s collarbones. “You know what I meant.”

“I do,” Greg replies, and it’s not condescending, just affirming.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” he says, aware that the words are coming out a little slurred as he slouches towards unconsciousness, but unable to sharpen them. “Being near you makes me feel like everything’s alright. Or like nothing’s alright, but that maybe I can fix it.”

“Don’t worry,” Greg says, his hand coming to rest weighty and warm against the spot between Nick’s neck and shoulder blade. “We’ll figure it out,” he says, and (not for the first time) Nick believes him.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this post](https://princesspatria.tumblr.com/post/187696616915/ok-so-we-know-nick-doesnt-like-peanut-butter-but).


End file.
